55 comments:

The article you cite also says this:You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows.You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.

As someone who has had relatives die (actually ruthless slaughter would be a better description) at the hands of terrorists who claim a "cultural victomhood", I can stand and say that there is no place on earth superior to the United States of America. All cultures are not equal. The story of man is the effort to break away from the repression of caste and tribal societies, from dictatorial governments. Anyone who tells you any other culture is superior to the freedoms and liberties of the United States - the ONE country that makes similar cultures to ours around the world even possible - is deluded from the guilt of receiving such treasures so freely or is jealous of and greedy for same.

Time to admit that multiculturalism is not only an abject failure, it is a dangerous practice, leading one to reject the superior and progressive culture for that of the murderous and intolerant barbarians, just so as not to offend the barbarian.

And I'm satisfied with Sen. Graham in that tent. (Scott Brown, too)(But if the party true believers are unhappy with that attitude, I'm ok with being a registered independent.)

So the Big Tent doesn’t believe in the FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS established by the Constitution…OK, please leave and go back to being an “Independent” because this True Believer/Bitter Clinger/Rightwing Extremist would rather NOT have you participate in the GOP.

Tell me, IF Pat Robertson had said this, or something about how it was perfectly OK to burn a Q’uran, would you, as an Independent, been Ok with that, too, or is it only when ‘squishes” speak, about more Conservative/Christian elements, that your “independence” is disturbed?

Read "The Peshwar Lancers" by SM Stirling. It describes an alternate India in which the British, for natural disaster reason (ie, asteroid strike) have to basically abandon Great Britain and exodus nearly en masse to India. The culture that results, described as the antogonists/protagonists some 40-80 years later, is extremely interesting.

"Teaching again that thousand year old lession. To Run from a Lancer is Death!"

My other favorite scene was the attack by terrorists on the scientists in Kasmir. The narrator sees the surprise in the eyes of the terrorists, when swamped by a mob wielding sword canes, clubs and a betel juiced spitoon. She ponders, "what else could one expect when men of the martial caste see women and children attacked?"

The trouble with Graham and his best friend McCain has been that they expect to do better when talking about the same nonsense as the "Make Believe Media" is talking about. They mistake that for taking a middle of the road position, while they are really agreeing with the most extremist propaganda of the Dems and trying to take actions that will make it come true. No wonder an anaytical thinker like Steyn living in the real world despises that tripe.

Stuttaford's reply was fairly reasonable (though some, if not many consider Jones' stupid act a bit more serious than merely a "faux pas," etc--possibly criminal). Steyn on the other hand is another whining fratboy MBA type who should be byatch slapped

So the "perpetually aggrieved" here are not Rush Limbaugh dittoheads as I had first thought.

Easy to see how you'd be confused since dittoheads are notorious for overrunning UN compounds and beheading the workers whenever some liberal dickwad desecrates a Limbaugh transcript. And don't forget how US Senators go on TV and denounce the liberal transcript-burners, blaming them for the massacres and threatening to curtail everyone's free speech rights just to placate the crazed adherents of El Rushbo.

Am I wrong in remembering that FLS used to occasionally post because he had an opinion he wanted to share, or an observation he wanted to make? They weren't usually worth reading, but they were at least honestly made. It seems like all he ever does these days is try to provoke an angry response from the other regulars.

Well, there is a lot of this perpetually aggrieved stuff to go around..I like Steyn but in some ways he too is perpetually aggrieved.

I don't think we should have laws against burning Korans, but at the same time where has everyone's common sense gone? I mean come on, what does this prove? Weird pastor burns Koran, extremists go crazy and kill people. It is not as if we could not see how this was going to end.

I don't think Graham is a girl, in fact he is one of the few members of Congress who actually owns and knows how to use a firearm..he is just so single minded when it comes to the military that he goes off the deep end sometimes.

I think that it is ridiculous to try and interfere with the first amendment rights of Americans because of something like this...but I also think that Jones could care less if people get hurt.

He shouldn't have to. I say we burn a Koran every day until Middle Eastern Muslims get it through their heads they can't intimidate us. We're Americans, and soldiers are over there to fight to protect our freedoms - not so we can or will cower.

Weird pastor burns Koran, extremists go crazy and kill people. It is not as if we could not see how this was going to end.

How could we know how it would end when we're constantly told that the extremists are only a teeny tiny, minority of the peace loving followers of the religion of peace?

Is it possible that when some obscure Florida pastor gets a call from the Sec of Defense begging him not to burn a Koran or Gen. Pretreus says it will endanger our troops its because they realize the fanatics compromise a much larger percentage of the followers of the religion of pieces?

I mean come on, what does this prove? Weird pastor burns Koran, extremists go crazy and kill people. It is not as if we could not see how this was going to end.

The problem is that while our common sense tells us that most Muslim nations are barbaric, nobody in power -- not politicians, not academia, not the news or entertainment media -- will publicly admit it. They all pretend there is no real problem here.

One of the purposes of Gandhi's original campaign of resistance to British occupation was to provoke British atrocities by refusing to play ball. He knew that innocent people would get hurt; he told them as much. But it had to be done, because so long as the Indians were willing to humbly submit to the British, and refuse to exercise their rights, the British could pretend they were benevolent rulers.

Similarly, so long as we limit our own free speech, we can allow the Muslim world to continue claiming it is not culturally psychotic. But why should we be co-conspirators in that?

I bet I was in more fights before I got out of elementary school then you've had in your life. And the I started a good run because I liked it. I served in the military, was a boxer representing my ship, and have a stab wound in my back from a gang fight and one in my leg from a brawl with several guys who, lets just say, resorted to desperate measures because I was going through an Errol Flynn faze. I know I've mentioned that out of the 20 guys I grew up with, there are 4 of us left and that ain't because I'm a pushover.

I won't tell you all I've done to people but there's a German who no longer has an eye.

I an't trying to say I'm billy badass - there's always somebody bigger and I've learned that the hard way - but I'm willing, FLS, and that alone matters more than all the guys lifting weights in the world.

My pictures are online, so you can see whose talking. Where's yours, big mouth?

================A big tent belief, which I support, presumes that to build a national ticket you need someone who matches their constuency's values - better than some clone of some ideal stalwart ideologue of a Party Base far remote from the candidate's own electorate.

Lindsey in many ways is as out of step with S Carolina voters as Max Cleland was in Georgia. He is a little man, a worshipful jock-sniffer of McCain and his supreme Idol, David Petraeus. If McCain ever replaced M Jordan in the underwear commericials - Lindsey would be the grovelling fawning fan swearing he is wearing McCain's underwear.

S Carolina can do better than him. Next time, I hope there is a Primary challenge - just no unelectable "spunky 'n cute if clueless" Christine O'Donnells or Sharron Angles the "Base" foists on the voters. (I didn't think it was possible that Nevadans could hate anybody more than Harry Reid and his sons...then Republican beyond right wing true believers gave us Angle.)